Outrage has been growing in Hungary over an anti-Roma article written by a founding member of the ruling Fidesz party.

Describing a New Year's Eve bar brawl in which several people were seriously injured and some of the attackers were reportedly Roma, Zsolt Bayer said "a significant part of the Roma are unfit for co-existence. They are not fit to live among people. These Roma are animals and they behave like animals."

His commentary in Saturday's Magyar Hirlap newspaper criticised the "politically correct western world" for advocating tolerance and understanding of Roma, who comprise 7% of Hungary's 10 million people and are often among its poorest and least educated citizens. Roma are also known as Gypsies.

The justice minister, Tibor Navracsics, condemned the article, but a Fidesz spokeswoman said it would not take a position on an opinion piece.

Opposition parties said authorities must decide whether Bayer should be prosecuted for incitement against a minority, and urged Fidesz to expel him. If that does not happen, opposition groups say, they will stage a protest on Sunday outside Fidesz headquarters.

Bayer, who also has written columns that have been criticised as anti-Semitic or racist, served as the Fidesz press chief in the early 1990s. He is one of the main organisers of the Peace March, events in support of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government that have drawn huge crowds over the past year.

On Tuesday, Bayer said in another column in Magyar Hirlap that his words had been willfully distorted and his only intention was to "make something happen" with the Roma issue. "I want order," he wrote. "I want every honourable Gypsy to get on in life in this country, and for every Gypsy unable and unfit to live in society to be cast out of society."